Courtney McGrail
Staff Reporter
A leading psychiatrist has welcomed a new study which establishes an appreciable link between the time spent by a mother with her children and the children’s cognitive and social development.
Reacting to news that researchers from the University of Essex and University College London have found that the greater a mother’s attention and time spent with her children between the ages of three and seven leads to a major benefit in developmental terms, Prof. Patricia Casey said “this confirms what every parent knows, that children do very well with the love and attention of their mothers. It shows the power of a mother in shaping development and character.”
Study
The British study, the first of its kind for that country, analysed data contained in the UK Millennium Cohort Study of infants born between September 2000 and January 2002, and focused on some 8,000 children and their mothers to reveal the positive impact of interaction between them from a child’s earliest years.
Broadening the scope of the study, researchers also found that the educational attainment of a mother also showed a correlation when interacting with a child.
The team revealed that an activity such as reading with a child between three and five years of age with a mother educated beyond minimum school-leaving age leads to significantly increased verbal skills at seven for those children over the children of mothers who are less well educated.
Pressed on the role of fathers, Prof. Casey pointed out that “the study was unable to deal with the input from fathers as response to the study on their part was so low [but] a similar study on fathers is needed to get a fully rounded picture”.
